Double Page Spread Collage

This is my montage of music magazine double page spreads. I created this by gathering ten different double page spreads from various music magazines and presenting them in collage form. I decided to do this research so that I can understand what should be included in my double page spread and learn about the different features of these professional magazines articles. This will help me when I start to plan and design this part of my magazine. Especially when I think about images, text and layout.

I have looked at each double page spread separately and compared them to find out about the most popular features. By looking at these images I have learnt about how many images they tend to use. Eight out of the ten use from 1-3 images, two use from 4-6 images and none of them use 7 or more. This helps guide me into knowing how many images to include on my double page spread, I have decided to not use any more than three. Then I looked into the types of shots they have used of the artists. Three use close ups, eight used mid-shots and three use long shots. I have decided that the best shot to use would be mid-shots because they are most popular and you get a recognisable and detailed image as it isn't taken too far away.
The next observation was the text and the way that it has been layed out. All the double page spreads use columns for their articles or interviews. Many of them use boxes or the columns are sectioned- I like the way that the bottom left double page spread on 'Shakira' has creatively made their text look like a separate magazine that someone is reading. I also looked at the amount of columns that the magazines use and found that all of them apart from one use 1-5 columns. This helps me to know that generally music magazines use from one to five columns across a double page spread. When creating my magazine I will have no more than five columns because otherwise it can look like too much information which could be time consuming. Having fewer than six could make the article or interview look more interesting and something for the reader to read for fun rather than an overload of information.
The last thing that I discovered from looking at these magazine pages are the six out of the ten have clearly enlarged a quote from the text. In some cases they have used a quote as the title of the article also. I like the way that it intrigues the reader into reading the text and therefore I will try to create the same effect when designing and writing my double page spread for my music magazine.